


Makeshift

by Thene



Category: Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: AU - no FFXIII-2, Family, Multi, Post-Game(s), coming home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thene/pseuds/Thene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lightning finds her way home one scrap at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Makeshift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wallwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/gifts).



> For prompt #45, _"Final Fantasy XIII (not XIII-2), Serah/Snow/Lightning. Domestic life, post-canon - figuring out how to build a home that suits the three of them."_ I went with the family rather than the threesome per se; hope that's okay.

Their first home was shared with everyone. It was built out of parts of the wrecked plane and the rocks it had brought down with it, tucked into the valley lull where the beasts didn't venture. It was like a small fortress. They slept on the earth for the first two weeks, five bodies in nooks of fuselage while one kept watch in the turret made from the broken nose of the plane, one of Sazh's pistols in hand. Pulse wasn't safe; the newcomers wanted to kill them and the natives would happily have gnawed the flesh from their bones.

It lasted for a month, fractious and sad; Lightning's joy and relief at being reunited with Serah was constantly tested by struggle and fear. She fought with Sazh and Snow about how, or if, to approach the Cocoon refugees. Serah was desperate to contact their NORA friends; Sazh was worried about it, Lightning angrily dismissive. Grief for the fallen came in bursts, reverberated in corners of bulkhead, wearying the already exhausted. It couldn't last.

Some days, Lightning walked out into the Massif at the height of the day, and scaled rocks until she saw the noon sun shining through the crystal pillar, prism-split, her dear friends awash with rainbow light. _These are Pulse l'Cie!_ she wanted to tell the fools who clustered by the pillar. _These are the people you hated. These are the people who you Purged and hunted. This is the brand I wore._

It was the only place she could cry. She knelt on the rocks and wept out her awe and fury, waiting in the shadows as Cocoon blotted the sun from the sky, cursing fal'Cie and humans alike. She'd walk home, feeling stupid and lax for indulging her emotions when she should have been protecting her sister and friends, only to be drawn back to her vigil a few days later.

 

It was raining, and she should have turned back. She gripped the slick rocks harder than ever, pulling upwards until she saw Cocoon lit by cloudshadow, blue patches of crystal and shade. She stumbled, catching herself in fistfuls of mountain-grass and remembering - _"Cocoon's a floating nest of vipers, ready to strike"_ \- she'd come to believe that, believe in brands and divisions and an eternity of hate, even as she prepared to give everything to save Cocoon - even now. It was so easy to resent the place that hated the women who'd given their lives to save it. It would have been so easy to turn her back on what they'd done.

They wouldn't let her.

She knelt, and felt a strong hand on her shoulder. And another, light and gentle. She looked up, shaking with emotion, and Snow pulled her up into their embrace.

 

They all walked to the Pillar together, because they'd argued too long over who ought to stay behind. Snow and Sazh took turns to carry Dajh when he was tired, and Lightning watched Serah look up at the boy on Snow's shoulders, looking out over the strange new world. _"- We have a new family now, we stick together, you hear me?"_ she heard the lost voice speak from her memories.

She grabbed Serah's hand and held it, keeping close.

 

Their new home was under the pillar, on the edge of the great tent-city; Snow had laughed at them soundly for not believing, and he'd taken the hands of everyone who they'd found again, everyone who'd believed in them; Rygdea, Bartholomew, everyone from NORA. Alive and in charge of the chaos. Serah greeted them all like someone awoken from a nightmare, and Lightning silently shouldered her responsibility for causing and prolonging it. 

Goddamnit, she'd needed the time but Serah had needed her friends back. Serah had never even known what she'd fought for, what she'd lost.

She'd needed to look at them in the sunlight from afar, Ragnarok watching over the new city, before she could bring herself to come here. Was that selfish? She watched Hope and his father, talking quietly by firelight. Sazh had walked away, Dajh in his arms, to look for his own old friends. Serah was dancing with Yuj and Lebreau, and she looked like the end of winter. The end of the War of Transgression.

Lightning held her gunblade ready. _No one's tried to kill her yet._

Snow's defensive stance beside her was so in keeping with her instincts that it took a moment to even register. "Not about to quit fighting, huh?"

"For her? Never."

Snow nodded slightly, but he lowered his fists. "You look up at the stars yet?"

Lightning glanced upward, and found herself staring through folds of night. Threads of light ran through the fractal twists of crystal, its shape only suggested, only a play of shadows, form as lost as their voices, their eyes. "Snow..."

"There's something bigger than us watching over her tonight. So relax," he nudged her, and tried to take her arm. She looked on upward, and felt him walk away after a while, joining Serah, leaving her behind.

She didn't sleep that night, exactly, but when they made their beds on the edge of the tent-city, she lay on the open ground and dreamed about the crystal, between the stars and the embers. She told herself she needed to let go.

 

Lightning's next home was a tarp roped to the edge of Rygdea's command tent, but when NORA and Snow announced their plans to make a settlement on the coastline, she immediately packed her few belongings to leave. Rygdea had slept maybe twice since Cocoon had slipped from the sky, and he wore a tangled mat of a beard, but he was remarkably agreeable about his lieutenant's need to lead. She tried to resign, but he just offered her a scouting party; she refused, saying she had enough people she trusted.

She had Snow.

They built their new home above the high-water line, out of debris and driftwood and old skills rediscovered, beams carved on her blade's-edge and bottle-glass made under bonfires in the sand. Serah wove rattan doors out of dune-straw. Lightning worked and watched as their shelter got stronger. All she wanted was a room with space to stretch out and sleep and a window that faced the pillar - it would be blurred and faraway, but she needed it within her sight. She pounded foundations into the loose earth with Snow, piecemeal architecture that halted whenever they ran out of wood, only to send them to lie exhausted in the sea.

She'd imagined herself in vigilance and solitude, alone and apart from her sister and friend. It wasn't until the work was done that she saw her room as it was; a place at the heart of a home. And others had worked alongside them, making their home the heart of a town, a new place beyond Purge and Ragnarok.

 _These are my family,_ she told herself, and rapped a salute on the glass; it was as if the pillar she looked up at was far below the ocean. The sun shone on her through crystal and glass, and she found the lost voice's meaning and answered, "Fang, I hear you."


End file.
